So now that I was able to sleep over it (and without the stress of the long queues and fear to be thrown out of the game) I will give my impressions about the expansion.

First I do think that it was a very good end for the first story arc. I had moments where I was in tears, where I laughed or felt sad. Still for me it never reached Shadowbringers. These escort and stealth missions got on my nerves the more we got. Some of them made sense but for others it felt like padding. The same with these quests where you have to go to specific points and wait and look around.

Well now into spoiler territory
I loved that till the very end Hydealyn was a goddess with faults but still good at heart. That SE did not turn around and made us fight her to destroy her but as a test.

I am also fine with what they have done to Zodiark. After all he had always just be a tool for the Ascians. As we learned he was controlled by all the sacrificed souls that saw themselves as the will of the star (which was probably an honor for them seeing how they lived to make the planet better) and I wonder if they could even be exchanged...what would have happened to Zodiark and his mission if suddenly the new souls might not want to be the will of the star and be full of anger and hatred for the Ancients? Still happy that these souls got released and will be able to be reborn.

I am not really sure if I like Endsinger. I enjoyed the Hydealyn dungeon and was looking forward to the last one, the one with all the creepy images in the trailer. But before that we had to go through a copy of different "worlds" and of course all had the same theme of despair and finding no sense in existence. Honestly by the end of that zone I was already over that...and I just cant believe that most if not all worlds ended in such a way. And even if they did (one day every star will die after all) it would not mean that every person on that planet yearned for oblivion.

With the amount of stars in this universe and the relative small amount of the birds (bad remembering names...) I just cant believe that they saw it all...and as we learned through the notes in the dungeon, the birds may have played a huge part in starting their ends and death wishes...which for me means that somehow these birds are able to be such a huge influence...

It was too much of the despair, too much of the talk about ending it all that instead of feeling bad, it made me feel a bit annoyed. Like "I get it SE" everything will end bad, our world too, even if you have a happy world where nobody dies, they yearn for death...I am not sure what was so bad about it? I mean they can live a long life that may at some point lose its meaning and then get the choice to die. Thats not that bad imo. Even the Ancients in a way lived like that. If they felt they have done enough for the planet they choose to die. Bascially they were "immortal" but still had their meanings in life. And some like Venat even continued to live even when their duty was done.

All of that has really tampered the finale for me quite a bit, especially when it was forced to end with fight with Zenos...I liked the part where we could not even stand anymore and how we seemingly got some grave wounds but I wished that was from fighting the Endsinger and not that spoiled prince...

Not that I of course disliked the whole end part. There were great moments in between that were awesome. All the speeches from the Scions but especially Grahas (with that fistpump) and the twins. The last two being much more concerned with leaving us behind. The slow walk afterwards with the prayers of people probably pushing us further, fearing again that we have lost another round of good friends.

The beautiful scenerey with the flowers and of course the last actions of Azems old friends.

Later then our character finally not accepting that their friends die and doing something! I grinned so widely when she got the teleport device out and saved them, knowing that she will have to stand alone but doing so with the knowledge that those she loved will be save. The last part of the fight against the Endsinger...where the scions prayer help us to defeat them.

Really there were many of such great scenes in this expansion (and I still cheered even when we had the "everyone comes together" in Shadowbringer already...but it was so nice to see how our actions really brought it all together) and if they only had that, it would have blown Shadowbringers away.

But sadly they also had way more low moments, even in the final act of the story, that it took me out too much. Especially since all of that hinged on Venat somehow being able to plan all of that. How it all ended that well even though we just changed our future in the expansion before that...was that too already one of her plans? Venat was a bright and awesome person (I liked her very much) and yes the Ancients were much more powerful than us. But it still felt that she was a bit too good in that part. That she somehow was able to put the plan in motion that for example the Space Ship was ready just in time for the Final days. And yet even with all her knowledge and seemingly power she did not try to changer her own future at all. I wonder if she might have explained it to our Azem who was not happy to just play it out and who tried to change it but failed...

So as a conclusion I am fine with the ending. Yet if I could have written it, I would not have put the stakes so high. I wished they kept it to just our planet, even if it would have truly just been an alien lifeform that sleeps deep in the planets core or something. I mean in the end the Final Days were a product of the Ancients themselves. Hermes did create the birds and sent them out to bring him an answer about life. And with that action he might have doomed who knows how many worlds because as far as I understood it was his creation that later turned into Endsinger because of all that despair. Having him create the "Final day boss" but keeping it soley on this planet would have felt better for me. His view on the way the Ancients threat other living lifeforms was compelling enough, it really did not need to be on such a wide scale.